Reason for a rain barrel

When I told my friends that it would be a good idea to make a rain barrel most of them laughed in my face. Most of them wondered why I would ever want to do such a thing. They thought it was "pointless" and that I just wanted to do it so that I could be a "penny-pincher". The linkage of saving pennies and collecting rainwater seemed to be the most common thoughts toward this idea. Although I understand their point of view that spending time and energy creating something that is meant to save a few bucks might seem to be over-the-top, I still think it is them that do not understand the whole concept. Water is becoming very scarce around the world. People are predicting that there are going to be many water shortages in the U.S. by 2013. If you did not know, that is only about 6 months away from now. The winters have been warmer and the summers have been hotter. Water has, and is going to continue, to dry with the new, year round, higher temperatures. If you were to have a 60-gallon drum to save water you would be surprised how fast it got filled up. If you had a very unlikely sized rooftop of about 200 square feet you would be able to fill up that 60-gallon drum with only a half of an inch of rainfall. Two hundred square feet is approximately the size of a parking spot ladies and gentlemen. Simply setting up multiple rain barrels at your house will give you the ability to save massive amounts of non-chlorinated water to do any of the following: water plants, save money, use to rinse of hands/feet/tools/cars, clean and treat to use for shower/drinking water, etc.